Tough Gobs, Rough Cops

PROBABLY the weirdest leading lady in Hollywood is Demi Moore. Beginning with her nude advanced-pregnancy cover for Vanity Fair (I commented that Demi should be upped to Trois-quarts), she has conceived any number of strategies to rattle us. There was the absurdly rewritten Scarlet Letter, and the preposterous Striptease, where she used her bared body as a passive-aggressive weapon. And now G. I. Jane, in which she plunges into sado-masochistic depths plumbed only by Sadean heroines. Some dreadful ambition gnaws at her innards, hungry for unholy challenges; but instead of becoming a latter-day Duse, she remains merely a doozy.

Jordan O’Neil (note the masculine-sounding name) is a young Navy lieutenant whom an opportunistic woman senator with her own agenda propels into joining the Navy SEALs, an outfit that performs commando raids and other sticky tasks, and whose training is the toughest in the service, if not in the world. The presumption is that even with some concessions made to her, she will wash out. But Jordan insists on equal treatment, and, boy, does she get it from the fanatical Master Chief, played by Viggo Mortensen with a sublime blend of patriotic fervor and flat-out sadism.

JS

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John Simon

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PROBABLY the weirdest leading lady in Hollywood is Demi Moore. Beginning with her nude advanced-pregnancy cover for Vanity Fair (I commented that Demi should be upped to Trois-quarts), she has conceived any number of strategies to rattle us. There was the absurdly rewritten Scarlet Letter, and the preposterous Striptease, where she used her bared body as a passive-aggressive weapon. And now G. I. Jane, in which she plunges into sado-masochistic depths plumbed only by Sadean heroines. Some dreadful ambition gnaws at her innards, hungry for unholy challenges; but instead of becoming a latter-day Duse, she remains merely a doozy.

Jordan O’Neil (note the masculine-sounding name) is a young Navy lieutenant whom an opportunistic woman senator with her own agenda propels into joining the Navy SEALs, an outfit that performs commando raids and other sticky tasks, and whose training is the toughest in the service, if not in the world. The presumption is that even with some concessions made to her, she will wash out. But Jordan insists on equal treatment, and, boy, does she get it from the fanatical Master Chief, played by Viggo Mortensen with a sublime blend of patriotic fervor and flat-out sadism.